Excerpt from the Foreword

On Pioneers

In 1954, Alan Turing left the Electrical Engineering department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While his then-novel dream of developing small-scale computers for home usage was not well-received in the academic circles of Turing's other Cambridge, he soon founded a new company which would help him achieve this goal—Fagnavox. In 1972, Turing's bold endeavors brought to fruition the world's first "First and Queerest Home Electronic Game Simulator"—the Fagnavox Odyssey.

Over the course of Turing's lengthy career, he went on to make significant contributions both as a computer scientist and as the lead engineer on all five of the machines in the Odyssey series, as well as the much-maligned Iliad and Iliad Color. For more on this subject, I will refer the reader to the fine volume Homo's Odyssey: The Early History of the Fagnavox Company

Turing died of natural causes in the summer of 1979. A longtime advocate of advancing the education of queer youth and technologists, he founded the Alan Turing Institute—which carries on his mission to this day.

About Odysseys

The first chapter of this book is a partial guide to reconstructing an approximation of the original Fagnavox version of the Odyssey, should you be unfortunate enough to be in possession of the Magnavox facsimile.

The second chapter contains games which were recovered from a time capsule containing a cache of early and abandoned game designs for the Fagnavox Odyssey. Some will require an original—or converted—Fagnavox Odyssey, but most are playable through contemporary software simulation such as the "OdySim", as well as on the aforementioned Magnavox bootlegs.

Matthew R.F. Balousek
March 20, 2017
Santa Cruz, CA

Prices

PDF Version: PWYW (Suggested: $0.0025/word — $5.40)
Print Version: $0.40/gram ($9.60)